Why green cardamoms?

Memory tag: Over tea at home in Laitkor, Shillong, talking about my two month old column in the Shillong Times.

Dear readers,
  Its two months since I have been writing this column. A friend asked, 'why Green Cardamoms?' How does it relate to all that you have wandered through at will? To begin at the beginning, it wasn’t the first title I chose. My first, “Rambling Rose” was too common and clichéd, I was told. So I began to look around. It had to be me, have a touch of nature and a sense of small nuggets that brought in a fresh dimension.

Laid back low wooden chairs and a pine wood divan welcome friends. Tea cups and cakes are laid out on an old paint bespattered table; a school theatre relic from time when the play “Michael” ( a dramatized version of Leo Tolstoy's," What Men Live By") was staged. It remains unpolished, unvarnished, as if its marks were memories that refinement would obliterate. A shelf full of books in the background. A stone platter with miniature boxes is passed around after tea. Someone opens a tiny silver one and finds it full of small green cardamom buds or chhoti elaichi. A learned friend once told me that Gaurangi was a synonym for chotti elaichi, besides, ela in Sanskrit means elaichi.

That probably explains part of the reason why I chose this name. But how does it mesh with the ramblings I have bound together under its name? Like all spices, the cardamom too has travelled with human civilization, commerce and palate. I have often wondered/ imagined how the first human felt when he rather tentatively popped these seeds into his mouth? I can see the frown disappearing into a widespread smile as the tingling sweetness spread over his taste buds. His mouth forming a “wow!” (or its equivalent).Once touched, his taste buds begged for more. He probably quickly hoarded the buds from the Elettaria cardamomum plant and came back a king to his village. Then, like a magician, at the opportune moment, he offered one to his neighbour. And the spice trade was on! He probably bartered these for obsidian knives, cowries and whatever else he did not have or coveted.

From the first social contact over cups of cardamom flavored tea or coffee begins an entire ritual of breaking bread together. This cardamom could add flavor to lentil, vegetable, meat, fish, egg, rice, desert. Infact it rambles at ease through our omnivore diet, and is there at the end to freshen our palates for another ouvre. It explodes with a starburst of flavour when demurely tucked into a betel leaf cone. I therefore hope to add flavour in starbursts or subtly, and remain,
Yours, the wordsmith.
Gaurangi Maitra.